Trotsky and the Origins of Trotskyism

Trotsky and the Origins of Trotskyism highlights the role of Alfred Rosmer in the early opposition to Stalinism inside the Comintern and the French Communist Party, from which he was expelled in 1924. The book includes translations of recent articles from the French theoretical journal Prométhée as well as extracts from Rosmer’s own oppositional magazine La Révolution prolétariennne from the 1920s, in which he and his allies deal with the bureaucratisation of the Communist Party and Stalin’s victory over the Old Bolsheviks. The final chapters, entitled ’On the Planet Without a Visa’, were written by Rosmer, a close acqaintance of Trotsky for 35 years, in the early 1950s to complete Trotsky’s autobiography My Life. They cover the years of exile until his death in Mexico in 1940 and incorporate Trotsky’s own words to describe his personal fortunes and the essence of his thought.